I’m on the last stretch of prep work for the provincial Craft & Gift Wholesale Show this weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing familiar faces (and a few new ones).

It’s a surprisingly introspective process. Someone always asks, “What’s new this year?” and it makes me reflect on all the changes my work has gone through in the previous year… I’ve experimented with glaze chemistry, and landed on colour/texture combos I’m very happy with. I’ve changed the way I make handles. I’ve gotten better at throwing big teapots. I’ve really dialed in the proportions between body size, handle width, and handle thickness. I’ve refined my feet, and then refined them again a few months later. I’ve changed the way I draw my flowers.

So I’ve had a hankering for something different. Here are some prototypes I’ve been working on. The cream on white sgraffito cup on the far right didn’t really work (the slip needs a little more iron or something), but the black and white one with the matte turquoise glaze did. I love the look of that glaze, and the way it interacts with my clear, but putting that design into production would mean investing space into material storage, and i don’t really have the room right now.

The other three cups have the very real advantage of being made with materials I’ve already got on hand, so I may end up going with them in the long run…

Day one of ACTS is down; day two is starting. So far, so good… I don’t have much experience with this show, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but I think it’s going alright. I’ve gotten enough orders to pay for the trip here, so that’s a lot of pressure off. Which is nice.

It’s been interesting meeting craftspeople from outside Newfoundland. Picking up the differences and commonalities in our businesses and our markets.